WEEKLY WRAP: Australia's best financial advisory practice

by
WP |
23 Aug 2013

The Wealth Designers has been recognised as Australia’s best financial advisory practice, in the Best Practice competition.

The Perth-based boutique financial planning firm is headed by Troy MacMillan. The quality of advice, unique client segmentation model and commitment to exceptional client service saw the firm win from one of the “strongest fields of entrants” in the competition’s history.

Life insurer TAL has been named ‘Life Company of the Year’ at the 2013 AFR Smart Investor 2013 Blue Ribbon Awards.

TAL also won the Blue Ribbon Award for income protection with its Income Protection Premier product.

Sandhurst Trustees, which forms part of Bendigo Wealth, has been granted authorisation by APRA to issue a MySuper product under the new regime implemented by the Australian Government.

The investment strategy is a lifecycle strategy comprising three age bands:

Bendigo Growth Index Fund - under age 55

Bendigo Balanced Index Fund – age 55 to 59

Bendigo Conservative Index Fund - age 60 and over

AMP will launch its two MySuper offers from 1 January 2014, following approval from APRA.

AMP Financial Services will draw on the investment expertise of AMP Capital to offer two My Super investment options; a lifecycle option and a balanced diversified option.

Prime Value is in a unique position to capitalise on the SIV rules, due to its origins as a family office managing high net worth investors, and its Asian background.

Financial Planning Week, an initiative by the FPA, will run nationally from 26th August to 1st September. Mark Rantall, CEO of the Financial Planning Association (FPA), said that part of the aim was to build on the work the FPA community had done to transform financial planning into a trusted and respected profession.

The questions financial planners are most asked, as well as the most debated topics from last year’s Financial Planning Week will form the basis of the key areas for discussion during this year’s Financial Planning Week.

Saxo Capital Markets (Saxo) has called on all financial services firms to boost transparency, unveiling a market leading initiative that will see a review sent quarterly to all Saxo clients.

The review will provide a check between clients’ trading accounts and the segregated trust bank accounts to ensure the two balances can be reconciled and matched, providing total transparency of client money (TOCM)

The hedge funds industry today announced the finalists for the 2013 Hedge Fund Awards.

Winners will be announced at the Hedge Funds Rock event on 12th September 2013, at The Star. Finalists for the Australian Hedge Fund of the Year 2013 are (in alphabetical order), BlackRock Multi Opportunity Fund, Laminar Credit Opportunities Fund and Whitehaven SPC Correlation Fund.

The Australian ETF market has exceeded the $8 billion mark for the first time, recording 10 consecutive months of record highs to reach $8.25 billion in assets under management, according to BetaShares’ Australian ETF Review for July.

The market capitalisation of exchange traded funds on the ASX grew by $618 million – or 8.1% - for the month; with $162 million inflows of new money and the remainder related to market movements.